When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reopened the competition to select a fighter to replace the CF-18, two questions were raised from that decision, one with long-term implications, and one with immediate consequences. The first: when will the modernization of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) fighter force be complete? The second: what will the RCAF do to mitigate the so-called capability gap (Canada’s current fleet is more than 30 years old, and down from 138 to 77 aircraft) to have a certain number of the most capable fighter jets mission-ready at all times and to ensure the capacity to address all the missions asked of it between now and complete modernization? I would like to address the second question.

I’m a retired U.S. Naval Aviator with almost 40 years of service. I commanded at every level in the U.S. Navy: Strike Fighter Squadrons, Air Wings, Carrier Strike Groups, and Fleets. I started flying the F-18A in 1983, and stopped flying the F/A-18E/F just before I made my third star off the flight decks of the USS Harry S Truman in the Arabian Gulf. After flying F/A-18’s for 25 years and continuing to command them for another eight years, I’ve been called a Hornet Admiral. I know Hornets and Super Hornets and have relied on them for decades. Today, I consult for industry, including Boeing. I do so because I believe in the importance of competition in the defense industrial base. Competition balances industry’s need to provide profit to their shareholders, while delivering both the best capability to the warfighter and value to the taxpayer.

My largest concern is the delay in capability of the RCAF

As the debate unfolds in Canada over the modernization of its fighter jet fleet, my largest concern is the continued delay in both capacity and capability of the Royal Canadian Air Force. I am also appalled at the vast amount of misinformation in the media over the issue. As just one example, some “experts” have suggested the Super Hornet can’t perform the Defence of Canada/North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) mission in the harsh Canadian climate, against the rapidly evolving Russian bomber/long range cruise missile threat. Let me assure you that that is not true.

Today’s Super Hornet — which the U.S. Navy is flying — is not yesterday’s Hornet, which the RCAF is currently flying. The Super Hornet is not a “big” Hornet. It is a completely different fighter, with completely different sensors and sensor fusion, with much smaller signatures, with much better active defensive measures. It carries more fuel and has more weapon stations. It just happens to look a little like a legacy Hornet and has “hornet” in its name.

Is the Super Hornet an F-35? No, and it is not meant to be. It is built and modernized to complement the rest of the U.S. Navy’s weapons system, which the F-35C will be a part of too. The Super Hornet is interoperable with all variants of the F-35 and will fly alongside them for years to come. Furthermore, the U.S. Navy will continue to modernize both the Super Hornet and F-35C for the next 30 plus years, keeping both aircraft modern and lethal.

The Super Hornet is a completely different fighter from the Hornet

Why am I talking about U.S. Naval aviation while discussing the RCAF? The answer is simple. Both forces have the same missions, and operate in very similar threat environments. Both are required to surveil and defend a vast amount of battle space, and engage hostile fighters, bombers, and small radar cross-section cruise missiles in extremely harsh conditions.

In other words, the NORAD mission requires fighters with the ability to fly great distances and stay on station for a long time, with the right amount of signature reduction, integrated active defensive measures, Active Electronically Scanned Array radars, long-range infrared systems, and weapons.

For other missions, both the RCAF and U.S. Navy operate with international air forces to support combined and coalition joint operations. No air force fights alone—not the U.S. Navy, not the U.S. Air Force, and certainly not the RCAF. No one air force owns the compilation of capabilities required to succeed in today’s—and tomorrow’s—threat environments. In the U.S. Armed Forces, that capability resides in the air arm of all four services—the Air Force, Army, Marines, and Navy. They fight as a team. The RCAF is also a critical part of that team.

Purchasing legacy Hornets could pose many problems down the road

Some people—including representatives of the Canadian government and other public and private citizens—have called for the potential purchase of used legacy Hornets to address these needs. This could pose many problems down the road. First, it is increasingly hard to find spare parts for F/A-18A/B/C/D models around the world, and the cost to keep them flying continues to grow. Already military maintainers have been forced to cannibalize some jets to keep others in the air. And there are only so many times the lives of the current aircraft can be extended before putting the safety of pilots at risk. Second, these used legacy Hornets will still not provide the modernized fighter capability that the RCAF desperately needs to complete its mission. More fundamentally, legacy Hornets are rapidly losing their ability to counter the rapidly evolving Russian threat. For these reasons, the U.S. Navy is accelerating the retirement of its legacy Hornets, and replacing them with new and even more advanced Super Hornets.

Finding the right balance of survivability, blended stealth capabilities, self-protection, weapons capacity, and range at an affordable cost is the key to fighter aviation in any country. Additionally, as every commander will tell you, it is not the aircraft but the aviator that is the critical component of a fighter, and Canadian fighter pilots are the best I have commanded and flown with. But complex fighter jets are not heirlooms to be handed down from father to grandson. High-speed flight and repeated takeoffs and landings take a heavy toll, and technology marches forward bringing new and necessary capabilities to outpace and defeat current and future threats.

The modernization of Canadian Air Force Fighters must not be further delayed. Canadian aviators desperately need more capable fighters, today—not in the next decade. One solution to help alleviate this urgent need is to expedite the implementation of the Interim Fighter Capability Project, and integrate 18 new Super Hornet aircraft into the RCAF fighter fleet until the long-term solution is implemented.

National Post

Admiral Bill Gortney culminated his 39 years of commissioned service as Commander, North American Aerospace Defense Command and Commander, United States Northern Command.